


Prost!

by hurdlelocker



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: But Not Actually Platonic, Fluff and Humor, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, POV Alternating, Platonic Cuddling, Rare Pairings, Spooning, Tried to Cram in as Many Cheers References as Possible, Unresolved Romantic Tension, did my best to keep the Sole Survivor totally generic, rated M for language only, there's only one bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:13:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23424532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hurdlelocker/pseuds/hurdlelocker
Summary: It was just supposed to be a simple errand. Leave Diamond City before dusk, check out the rumors about the Combat Zone, and meet back at Power Noodles for dinner. Unfortunately for everyone's favorite Railroad Agent and Ex-Gunner, nothing is ever that simple.
Relationships: Deacon/Robert Joseph MacCready
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40





	Prost!

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly just my excuse to write something set in Prost! (Cheers!) bar off the Common because it's my favorite Easter egg. And I couldn't resist forcing MacCready and Deacon together like this.
> 
> Major thanks to **Vulkan192** for doing beta reading, **Paladin-Piper** for letting me babble to her about this randomly for months, and to **electricshoebox** for helping with the tags.

It was just supposed to be a simple errand. Check out a rumor about the Combat Zone and meet back at Takahashi’s for dinner around dusk while Blue and Valentine reviewed some case notes. It had even been light out when Deacon and MacCready left Diamond City. But, somehow, what should have been an easy hour or so walk to the Theater District had become six hours of ducking and dodging what felt like literally every mutant and asshole in Boston before they even reached the Common. 

“What...the _fu-rick_ is going on today?!” MacCready panted as he collapsed behind the broken tank south of the park. 

“Fuck if I know!” Deacon gasped as he joined the sniper on the ground. In the past hour alone, they had barely escaped a horde of super mutants when they ran into some Rust Devils and their goddamn junkbots, only to be joined by a radscorpion. Luckily, they had picked up a couple Molotovs from an earlier raider ambush and were able to take out the ‘scorp and two of the bots with them. After picking off the remaining bot and incapacitating the glorified raiders, they hightailed it away from the inferno. 

They had barely caught their breath when they heard the cackling of drunk raiders to the east. 

“You’d think, with all the times any of us have come through here with the Boss getting to Goodneighbor, the area would be practically clear,” MacCready groaned, head lolling onto Deacon’s shoulder. 

“You’d think, but since when has anything stayed clear for more than a couple of days?” Deacon replied, leaning his head on the mercenary’s. Mac’s eyes opened in shock at the contact but he was too exhausted to care. They leaned on each other in the protection of the tank, both wordlessly willing the world to stay calm for just another hour.

Of course, Lady Luck had decided to continue to fuck with them. The drunken cackling got closer, underscored by a crack of thunder and the world turning a sickly green. And the Geiger counter in the new Pip-Boy on MacCready’s wrist started ticking worriedly.

“Shit. Of fucking course there would be a radstorm now,” the Railroad spy groaned, sitting up. “We gotta find better shelter.”

“Do you have any ideas? We’re right by the Common.”

“Nothing specific comes to mind, but one of these buildings ought to have a working door and four solid walls.”

The two men quietly snuck between the back end of the tank and the wall of the buildings on the west side of the Common. 

“Fuck, I wish I had a Stealth Boy on me,” Deacon swore under his breath.

“At least the fog provides a little cover?” MacCready hissed back, seeing Deacon nod in agreement.

The first doorway they saw was boarded up with broken windows. Soundless agreement to move forward. As they inched along the wall, keeping alert for the drunken raiders, changes in Swan’s Pond, or other dangers, MacCready noticed a door to his left, lower than the street level. The small window over the stairs was miraculously intact. He got Deacon’s attention and indicated toward his discovery. Deacon nodded and they quietly snuck down the stairs and through the door.

**~*~**

“Well, this certainly looks like the sort of place where everyone knew your name,” Deacon said appraisingly as they walked down the steps into what clearly used to be a bar. 

MacCready rolled his eyes. Sometimes Deacon said things that seemed like inside jokes he shared with no one else. Mac did have to agree with the spy’s assessment though: there _was_ something decidedly homey about the bar, even with its skeletal patrons still sitting on their stools.

Dust motes floated through the air as they looked through the remains of the bar, making sure that there was no one else hiding in the shadows. The remains of a staircase to their left appeared to have collapsed when the bombs fell, as they simply led to a pile of rubble. As Deacon entered the first door off of the main room, MacCready made his way down the hallway, checking the dilapidated restroom for radroaches or ferals before checking out the back room. Mercifully, there were no ghouls, roaches, or molerats lurking that he had seen; in fact, all things considered, this was one of the best places he had ever been in his twenty-two years. Having heard nothing from Deacon, MacCready made his way back to the room he’d seen Deacon enter.

“Deacon, everything okay in here?” MacCready whispered, a little anxiously after the chaos of the day they’d had.

Sunglasses glinting in the dim light of MacCready’s Pip-Boy, Deacon looked up sharply from the book he had found. “What? Oh, yeah. Everything’s good to go--I’m just a little shocked by the condition of the place. I mean, look at that couch! It’s dusty, but it’s _dry_ and I don’t smell any mold! Plus, I found books!”

 _Books? Who cares?_ MacCready thought. “Great. Well, I’m gonna see if I can’t find any food. I’m starving.”

“I think I saw some cans of Cram and maybe a box of BlamCo in here somewhere,” Deacon said absently, attention back on the book in his hand.

Mac rolled his eyes at the back of Deacon’s head--he barely knew the guy, but _of course_ he would get distracted by a pile of books. It didn’t even look like there were any comics in there either.

Leaving Deacon to his box of paperbacks, MacCready poked around the office himself. In addition to the Cram and BlamCo Deacon had mentioned, there was a variety of nearly every Pre-War food Mac had ever known, plus a crate of purified water. _What the heck is this place?_ MacCready marveled at all the water and food. Even stranger, there was a box of baseballs and gloves all signed with a scrawl that appeared to say “Mayday” and “16”—Mac always struggled to read Old World handwriting. 

“Hey Deacon, why d’you think someone would have a box of baseballs with writing on them in the office of a bar?”

“I dunno. Maybe the owner played?”

“Think Moe Cronin would pay extra for this sh-crap?”

“Hmmm...couldn’t hurt to see?”

“Yeah.”

Silence fell between them once more as Deacon returned to the novel in his hand and MacCready set about looking for a couple of forks for them to use. 

**~*~**

Deacon had no idea of how much time had passed when he headed the clinking of two glass bottles approaching.

“Here, I found some Salisbury Steaks and InstaMash in with the Cram. The heating elements actually worked in both. And crazily enough, the sink in that bathroom is actually working, so I figured we could use a couple of these plates lying around,” MacCready said as he handed over a plate of steaming food and a bottle of Gwinnett Lager. 

Deacon gasped in shock when he took the bottle, “Is that beer… _cold_?!”

“Yeah! I found this cooler behind the bar and nearly choked when I took a sip. I had never really realized that beer could taste so _good_!” MacCready’s eyes were wide with delight. “If this were a Grognak comic, I’d say there’s magic involved somehow, but… yeah…”

“Oh! Speaking of that crazy barbarian, I found a couple of issues of _Grognak_ and _Amazingly Awesome Tales_ buried in my book box,” Deacon placed his plate of food on the top of the desk behind him and dove into the box.

“No way! Really?” MacCready broke into a wide grin, “These are in such good shape! Wow, and I don’t think I’ve ever managed to find this issue!”

Deacon smiled and resumed his meal as he listened to the younger man babble about the comics. _Hmm… for a merc, he’s surprisingly sweet… “sweet?!” Deacon, what’s wrong with you? You barely know this guy from any other Gunner…_ Deacon shook his head slightly to quiet the voices. _Now is not the time to be describing new colleagues as “sweet” or any other word someone would use to describe a… small child? Baby animal? Attractive person? No. Certainly not the latter..._

“...and in that issue they had to find this weird claw thing but it took me a couple years to find a copy that had all the pages so I was in suspense for so long!”

“Heh, I’ve always been a fan of Grognak too—what _will_ that crazy barbarian do next?”

MacCready grinned at that, a hint of surprise highlighting his young face as he returned to his comic. 

Silence settled in the room, apart from the occasional clink of a fork or rustle of a page.

Suddenly, Deacon snapped his book shut. “Hey, MacCready, didn’t Blue say something about the Pip-Boys being able to send messages to each other?”

MacCready looked up, “Oh yeah. Huh. I’ll see if I can’t figure out how to let them know that we aren’t dead.”

“Not for lack of Boston’s trying though,” Deacon snarked as MacCready rolled his eyes and began fiddling with the device on his arm.

**~*~**

MacCready jumped as the silence in which he had been reading was broken by a series of awful popping and crunching noises.

“Aahhhhh… Didn’t realize how stiffly I’d been sitting,” Deacon said, standing up and stretching his back some more until the noises stopped. “I must be getting old.”

As Deacon gathered the dishes from dinner, MacCready stood up and did some stretching himself. _Huh… getting old? That guy can’t be much older than me…_

“So, d’you wanna be the big spoon or the little spoon?” Deacon asked as he walked back into the old office.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Big spoon or little spoon? I figure we have this nice couch, we might as well sleep on it, but since there’s only the one and it doesn’t look like the cushions come off…”

“Oh… ehrm… um…” MacCready felt his cheeks burn. _Why does this feel so uncomfortable? You’ve shared beds with plenty of people in a pinch. This shouldn’t be any different. Why does this feel different?_

“Personally, I like to be the big spoon, something about protecting people, I dunno,” Deacon said, eyebrows raised ever so slightly. “If being the little spoon bothers you, we can try to sleep back to back, but I dunno if we’ll both fit that way. And, regardless, I have a thing about sleeping with my face shoved into cushions.”

“Are you sure we should do that? Shouldn’t one of us stay up and keep watch or something?”

“Keep watch how? There’s only the one door in or out of the bar, and we can put some stuff in front of the door to make an alarm. Plus, I’m a light sleeper, so if there’s any noise, I’ll hear it. And I’ll keep Deliverer close.”

 _He’s certainly thought this through._ MacCready was silent and running out of reasonable protestations. Plus, he was really tired and, honestly? He could think of worse ways and places to sleep in and worse people to spend the night with.

“Fine. I’ll be the little spoon as long as you don’t try anything.”

“I’ll be the perfect gentleman.”

Using MacCready’s duster as a blanket and Deacon’s leather jacket as a pillow, the two men curled up on the office couch. As he drifted off to sleep, MacCready thought to himself about how unexpectedly safe he felt. _Is this what old books meant by cozy? I haven’t felt like this since… Lucy…_

**~*~**

A few hours later, Deacon stirred to consciousness, feeling unusually warm and cozy. Savoring the feeling, he decided to keep his eyes shut and inhaled deeply with contentment. His nostrils were flooded with a very vaguely familiar scent of woodsmoke, leather, and gunpowder. Flexing comfortably around the warm weight in front of him, his skin drank in the softness of the shirt, the give of the muscles under his arms, and the sharp angle of the elbow under his own.

Nuzzling closer, his conscious mind slowly began to catch up to his memory and he realized who he was curled around. His eyes snapped open but he willed himself to keep his breathing under control. Moments like this were so rare in the Commonwealth that it felt wrong to be the one to break the illusion of security and comfort. 

Deacon allowed himself to admire the way the baby hairs curled on MacCready’s neck. Seeing the merc from this angle reminded him of how _young_ the man was. 

MacCready began to stir and turned his head toward Deacon’s, lids slowly lifting at first, then snapping open with shock.

“Mornin’, babe,” Deacon purred, for no reason other than to tease the young man in his arms. No other reason at all. “Sleep well?”

MacCready raised an eyebrow, “Do you _ever_ take those sunglasses off?”

 _Really? That’s your question? Not, “Why did you call me ‘babe,’ you freak?” or “Why are you looking at me like that?”_ Deacon grinned, “Nope, I had an accident with WonderGlue a few months ago and they’re stuck.”

MacCready rolled his eyes and grunted, stretching his limbs as best he could without shoving Deacon off the couch. Deacon, acknowledging the need to stretch himself, reluctantly released his grip on the smaller man and moved to sit up. He heard a slight hiss as Mac felt cold air on his back.

“Hey, where’s that Pip-Boy? We should probably check in with Blue and see where they want to meet up.”

“Hang on, I’ll grab it. It’s in my pack. Didn’t want to sleep with that bulky thing on my arm. I can’t see how the boss does it.”

“Oh gross, really? That sounds fucking uncomfortable.”

“Says the man who sleeps in sunglasses?”

Deacon snorted at this, thinking, _Touché…_

MacCready set about sending a message to their formerly frozen boss while Deacon began gathering up the treasures they had found in the bar the previous night. He gave the comics to Mac but kept the paperbacks for himself. He took one of the signed baseballs as a momento, but left the rest for Mac to sell to Moe Cronin. _That man is supremely fixated on caps, but why does that seem significant? He used to run with the Gunners, all those pricks care about is caps._

Box of Sugar Bombs in hand, Deacon made another sweep of the bar to see if there was anything else worth taking with them. After confirming that the back room and the bathroom had been stripped of valuables, he paused over the postman’s cap in front of one of the two skeletons at the end of the bar. Obviously, the skeleton no longer needed it, but a niggling feeling of _wrongness_ had crept over him at the thought. _Why does that seem wrong though? I’ve taken plenty of disguise pieces off of corpses and skeletons before. Not that I even have an idea of what to do with that hat. Maybe that’s the problem?_

He made his way to the opening of the horseshoe-shaped bar and peered inside. The shelves mostly just had glassware under a thick layer of dust, but there were a couple of bottles of various liquors that looked worth grabbing, so he put them on top of the bar with the box of Sugar Bombs. Walking past the skeletal mailman and his friend, Deacon saw the cooler that had contained the magically cold beers MacCready had found the night before and compulsively checked inside to see if more had appeared. Unsurprisingly, it was indeed empty. Turning left around the column in the center of the bar, his gaze settled on two skeletons, a man and a woman, based on the rags hanging off the bones. It looked like they had died holding hands. The niggling feeling of _wrongness_ crept over his skin once more.

“Fuck. You’d think after all these years, I wouldn’t be bothered by finding people who clearly died _together_ when the bombs dropped…”

“Yeah, me either,” a quiet voice mumbled behind Deacon. He hadn’t realized he had spoken aloud. _Interesting that the merc is bothered by that. Killing people for caps should have deadened him._ He made a mental note to investigate later.

“I got a response from the boss,” MacCready continued. “They ended up spending the night at Valentine’s because of the storm and are on their way to the Combat Zone now. Sent the message from Trinity Tower. Apparently we got all the crazies last night and everyone is dead or asleep this morning.”

“Oh, good, good. Should we meet them there then?”

“Yeah, might as well.”

With a final look around the bar and the office, the two men gathered up their packs filled with food, water, and other treasures and headed out the door into the chilly Boston morning.

At the top of the small staircase returning them to ground level, MacCready paused and scanned the Common for any sudden movements of raiders or Swan.

Turning to Deacon, he said softly, “We should make sure to tell the boss about this place. Could be nice to have a place where we can just… get away.”

Deacon looked back over his shoulder at the door, “Hmm. Yeah. It’s not like they’re closed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you picked up on all the _Cheers!_ references! :)
> 
> This won’t be the last you’ll see from me starring these two; I have a full universe of Fallout 4 stories bubbling in my brain, waiting to emerge.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading/enjoying!
> 
> Find me on tumblr as **molliehaswords** , if you’d like!


End file.
